


weary of war

by endofadream



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because Bucky almost died y'all, Bucky didn't fall, First Kiss, First Time, Lots of kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 16:07:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13838298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: Bucky’s fingers slip.This time, he manages to scream the name: “Steve!”





	weary of war

**Author's Note:**

> so i've had this fic as a WIP for about a year now. i've been trying to figure out what to do with it, because my ideas are always so grandiose yet never come to fruition. basically, if people want more, i do have an extra 2k of this in a document that i can add to it ;)

_How long have I loved you?_

_With the immeasurable immensity of time._

_They tried to take you from me but like tree roots you are steadfast._

_I love you. I love you._

**——**

Steve blinks, and Bucky falls.

A blink is hardly a fraction of time. They happen so quickly, so unconsciously, that we don’t even know we’re doing it. But still, somehow, in that fraction of a second Steve sees Bucky falling, falling, reaching eternally for Steve’s hand.

Steve opens his eyes.

He opens his eyes and Bucky’s hand is gripping his, barely. Steve almost lets go from the surprise alone.

Bucky’s eyes are wide with terror. Frantic. His mouth forms a name, Steve’s name, but no sound comes out. Around them the wind whips, whistles. The train barrels on, its momentum swaying Steve sideways.

Bucky’s fingers slip.

This time, he manages to scream the name: “Steve!”

It kicks him into action, shaking away his shock. Steve pulls. Grunting with exertion, he pulls. Praying, he grits his teeth and digs his heels in and _pulls_.

Bucky sprawls onto the floor of the train car far from the gaping blast wound, Steve right behind him. Using their still-clasped hands Steve pulls them both up and holds them steady, one hand on Bucky’s chest.

Under Steve’s palm, under the heavy wool of Bucky’s coat, Bucky’s heart pounds. Steve breathes hard. They stare, the silence between them momentous. It lasts maybe fifteen seconds but it feels like hours, days, Bucky’s eyes flitting back and forth across Steve’s face. His hand, when he lifts it to touch Steve’s cheek, shakes, each individual digit trembling as it makes contact with Steve’s face, one by one.

He says, “Holy shit.”

Steve says, “Buck.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, quietly this time.

Steve moves his hand from Bucky’s chest to rest on the hand Bucky has on his face. He has no words. Doesn’t need them. All he can think is _Bucky is here Bucky is safe Bucky didn’t fall_.

Bucky’s eyes cut down to Steve’s lips. Quick, but Steve still sees the hesitance there, then the guarded fear when Bucky realizes what he’s done. His breath catches, the urge to move forward overwhelming, but the moment passes and he remembers where they are, who they need to stop. What they almost lost and what they could still lose.

“Come on,” he says, and he’s amazed that his voice doesn't shake. This is what Bucky’s always done to him: grounds him but makes him feel off-kilter at the same time. “We’ve still got HYDRA to stop.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Yeah,” he says, squaring his shoulders and straightening up. He lost his gun in the skirmish, but Steve still has his shield and they still have the rest of the Commandos to catch up to. “Let’s go get some Nazis.”

He knocks Steve’s shoulder, grinning lopsidedly like the ice and snow of the mountains didn’t nearly claim his body, and Steve doesn't let himself think of much else as he leads them back through the train car.

——

Steve’s thing is, he loves Bucky. Not like family, like Steve thought—and hoped—this feeling would be when it was still a barely-noticeable bud. Bucky is all Steve’s got left Stateside, but he also makes Steve weak in the knees. The one thing in this life that Steve can’t lose is Bucky. Maybe it’s selfish. Maybe Steve doesn’t care.

When he was a ninety-pound asthmatic with a crooked spine Steve knew Bucky deserved better. Bucky had gray eyes and sloping, broad shoulders and a smile to knock the pants off of anybody.

Now, nearly a foot taller and a hundred and ten pounds heavier, Steve fits nearly everyone’s dream model, but Bucky is still too good for him.

Bucky has always said he’s good, too, but Steve knows he’s not.

——

And yet.

And _yet_ …

After they’ve captured Zola and Gabe is taking great pleasure in locking the manacles around his wrists, Steve catches Bucky staring at him. Their eyes meet, but Bucky does not look away. His gaze is ice and flint and shards, calculating but not cold. Just sharp.

No one says a word. Eventually it’s Steve who has to break eye contact, but it doesn’t matter.

——

“How long?” asks Bucky later, after Zola has been turned over and they’re back at base. The debriefing had been exhausting, the weight of it finally catching up to Steve as he recalled the mission’s events. Phillips let them go without hassle and Steve booked it for his tent without much of a farewell, all too glad to finally get out of his uniform. Bucky followed suit, silent. It would be uncharacteristic but Bucky lives in prolonged silences now, Steve’s noticed. The far-away kind.

Now, Steve folds his uniform for something to do with his hands and doesn’t look over. Bucky doesn’t need to elaborate. Steve’s heart picks up pace, but his voice remains steady: “Long time. Longer than I can remember.”

He chances a glance over then, looks at Bucky’s profile in the wan light of the lamp behind him, darkness everywhere else. It’s amazing still how just seeing Bucky can make him feel like he’s free-falling. “Maybe even before I was alive,” he adds, quiet, half to himself. Because it’s true: Steve was born loving Bucky. He had to have been. There’s never been room in his heart for anyone else. Peggy, maybe, because Steve does love her, but the love Steve feels is a spark compared to the fire he has for Bucky.

Steve puts off turning around. Afraid that what he’d seen on Bucky’s face back in the train car was just elation, that Steve was making something out of nothing. It’s impossible to believe that the secret you’ve been keeping to your chest for so long is going to be welcomed.

Yet, when he does turn around Bucky is there, back straight despite the exhaustion present in his eyes. Steve takes a startled step back, but Bucky grabs him by his undershirt, holds him still. He looks down at his hands where they’re gripping Steve’s shirt, then drags his eyes up Steve’s chest, the line of his throat, until they finally meet Steve’s.

Bucky takes a step closer, their lips only inches apart, and finally Steve lifts his own hands, clutching at the sides of Bucky’s face. Inside his chest his heart is rattling now, pounding hard enough that Bucky surely has to hear it.

“You’re tellin’ me,” Bucky breathes, their noses touching, foreheads brushing, “you’re tellin’ _me_ that I coulda _died_ and not known how you felt?” His fingers flex, grabbing more of Steve’s shirt, and he lets out a breath that wants to be a laugh and adds, “You’re a real pill, Rogers.”

Steve’s ready to protest, but then Bucky’s lips are on his and he doesn't think much else.

“I’ve always liked you, you idiot,” Bucky says. They’ve parted with a wet noise that makes Steve shiver.

He kisses Steve with a raw fierceness that steals Steve’s breath away. His knees wobble, he stumbles, and this time Bucky does laugh, sucking Steve’s lower lip into his mouth before tilting his head to change the angle. It zips pleasure hot up Steve’s spine that then coils low in his gut; he moans, raking his fingers through Bucky’s hair, and kisses him back just as hard.

When it hits him that this could have been a very different situation, that it was almost very possible that it could be just him now in this tent wishing he would have reached further, pulled harder, it hits Steve like a punch to the chest

He almost lost his best friend today. He _watched_ him dangle over what could have been his death. Bucky’s mouth is warm on his, his hair is soft between his fingers and his body is a warm, hard line against Steve’s, but he was almost gone.

It hits him, and Steve can’t stop the choked sob that comes next.

Bucky makes a low noise in his throat, starting to pull back, but Steve cups the back of his head. “Don’t,” he murmurs. Salt mingles between their lips; Bucky lifts a hand to cup Steve’s jaw, thumb rubbing at the tears damp on Steve’s face. “Please,” Steve adds, thumbing at the dimple of Bucky’s chin, moving back far enough to stare cross-eyed at him.

“I’m here,” Bucky whispers, backing Steve slowly towards his cot. Steve lets himself be led, trusting Bucky to keep him safe. Bucky thumbs over the arch of Steve’s brow, slides his tongue warm and smooth into Steve’s mouth. “I’m okay, Stevie,” says Bucky, kissing the corner of Steve’s mouth, “I gotcha.”

And it’s like a kick in the gut, the twang of their home so far away in Bucky’s words, the familiarity that lies within them from every fight that Bucky has carried Steve home from, every illness that he sat, diligent, by Steve’s bedside.

The backs of Steve’s knees hit the edge of the cot and Bucky guides him down with a hand on the small of his back. Steve is comfortable leading Bucky and the Commandos out on the field, calling the shots with no hesitation, but here it feels wrong. Sacrilegious. Because he’s never been Bucky’s savior: Bucky’s always been his.

Bucky crawls on top of him, slow and careful in the tiny space the cot allows, knees on either side of Steve’s hips. He props himself up on his right arm, uses his left to smooth Steve’s hair away from his forehead.

Steve stares; in the low light of the room Bucky looks unearthly, beautiful, shadows reaching long over his face, curving around his eyes and nose and the high lines of his cheekbones. There’s a cut on his temple from the struggle to capture Zola. Steve wants to kiss it. He wants to kiss every part of Bucky that he can, from now until the day he dies.

“I’m here,” murmurs Bucky again. “You’re okay, Stevie. I’m okay.”

Their lips meet again, and Steve’s mind goes blissfully blank.

——

Steve’s thing is…

Well, there’s not a lot he wouldn’t do for Bucky. And there’s nothing like a near-death experience to make you pull your head out of your ass and finally act.

——

“How long?” Steve asks.

The great thing about his ranking is that Steve gets a separate tent. There’s a cot, too, but it can barely fit Steve’s bulk, and as it is…Steve would rather have Bucky on top of him rather than be comfortable. So he’d spread his blankets on the ground, laid down, and beckoned Bucky on top of him with shyly coy fingers and a warm-flushed face.

Bucky is broad and firm and warm. The tent is zipped and no one is guarding it; Steve would worry, but he’s pretty sure that at least half their team knows. That he’ll worry about later. Now, he’s just worrying about getting as much of Bucky’s skin bared as possible, letting his palms run over the width of muscles that Bucky didn't have before Basic.

After he says those words, Bucky’s words, Bucky scoffs.

“You can’t use my own words against me.”

Steve looks up at Bucky, smirking. He feels buoyant in a way that he never has before. Thinks that maybe all the poets and writers did have something correct when it came to embracing being in love: he feels untouchable, a thousand feet off the ground and swept up in a tunnel vision built for two. “Looks like I just did.”

Bucky snorts. “You’re a goddamn punk, you know that?”

“Takes one to know one,” Steve snarks.

Bucky rolls his eyes. The gesture, so simple and automatic, makes Steve’s lungs seize up in a mighty impressive echo of how they used to constantly. They came too close. Bucky could’ve not been here right now. Steve almost let him go and he’s never, _never_ going to do that again.

“You think I ain’t lived my entire miserable life bein’ in love with you?” Bucky whispers. It’s so quiet, but it jumps Steve out of his thoughts like a cymbal crash. Each syllable is shaped against Steve’s lips and he shivers with the intimacy of it.

“I was born loving you,” continues Bucky. He presses their mouths together, proper this time, then moves to Steve’s chin. “I took my first breath loving you.” He bites, then tips Steve’s chin up to continue down the soft underside. “And I took what I thought would be my last loving you.”

Steve’s heart swells, then constricts painfully. “Christ, Buck,” he murmurs, tear-laden. He shapes his hand to the side of Bucky’s face, brushes his thumb over the arch of Bucky’s cheekbone. “When did you become so poetic?”

Bucky is sweet and soft and apologetic. The light from the single oil lamp throws him into stark yellows and blacks, gleams on the whites of his eyes and highlights the blue.

“That’s the truth for you. You can’t hide from it. You can only—”

“Learn and grow from telling and accepting it,” Steve finishes. “I remember your ma saying that to us.”

“Usually after we broke a vase and lied about it.”

Steve laughs, and the way Bucky looks at him is so beautiful, so overwhelming, that he has to kiss him. So he does, urgently and selfishly, taking what he wants and dragging Bucky along for the ride. The heat doesn’t swell up all at one but rather crescendos, quietly, until Steve’s skin is buzzing, body aching, and he needs with a ferocity he’s never felt overcome him before.

“Touch me,” Steve whispers. He’s never felt this much desire in his life; he’s brimming with it, overflowing with it. He thinks that if he were to move, even a bit, he’d spill over. “Buck, sweetheart—”

“ _Fucking_ ,” Bucky growls, hands tearing at Steve’s shirt, his pants, socks and shoes. He doesn’t hesitate, not a bit, and Steve struggles to keep up, yanking Bucky’s clothes off as fast as he can. Bucky kisses him, nips at his lips and shoves his tongue deep. Steve yanks Bucky’s hair, throwing a leg up to wrap around Bucky’s waist.

They part. Bucky bites his lip, locking eyes briefly with Steve before looking down. Steve’s looking down, too, following the movement of Bucky’s hands as he traces the waistband of Steve’s shorts, rubs his palm lightly over the straining bulge of him; then he’s not looking anymore, head thrown back as Bucky pushes his shorts down and wraps a hand around Steve’s cock.

It’s different from all the times Steve would do this to himself. The angle is different, Bucky’s hand a little slimmer, his fingers a little longer. He goes slow and tight, where Steve usually settles for fast, but he finds himself not missing it much when Bucky’s wrist twists and his thumb presses hard to the vein underneath.

Bucky’s hand over Steve’s mouth silences his moan. He’s smiling, eyes crinkled at the corners. “Gotta keep quiet, doll,” he says, thumbing over the damp head of Steve’s cock. “Can you do that for me?”

With Bucky’s hand still over his mouth all Steve can do is nod, letting his eyes slip closed again, back arching in pleasure. Bucky presses a kiss to Steve’s forehead, rests his there a moment later. Adjusting his stance where he’s still knelt, far too clothed in pants that Steve wasn’t able to get off in time, over Steve’s thighs, Bucky watches the movement of his hand between Steve’s legs.

“Look goddamn beautiful like this.” Bucky rubs his thumb where Steve’s foreskin has retracted, and Steve has a brief moment where he’s _very_ grateful for Bucky’s hand over his mouth, because the noise he let out would have been enough to send the whole camp scrambling. “Christ, Stevie. Who knew you’d be so receptive?” He laughs, grin as wide as anything.

Steve aches to touch him. He aches for a pencil, charcoal, anything to capture how Bucky looks over him, sturdy and beautiful, silver gleam of his dog tags dangling from his neck. How his hand shapes around Steve’s cock, teases over his balls, makes Steve spread his legs wider, inviting for a _more_ that he isn't sure of yet.

Bucky works him slow and sure, but still with a caution that he isn’t quite able to mask. Steve watches him, breath hitching, back hitching. His cock gets slick enough quickly, and though they’ve got no Vaseline the sound is still as slick and filthy as if they did. Steve aches to watch Bucky’s face, but he can’t quite seem to look away from where Bucky’s hand is working him over, slick red cockhead appearing and disappearing in the tight circle of Bucky’s fist.

Steve wants to make it last longer; hell, he probably could now, with the serum, but it’s the knowledge that it’s Bucky, that he can _see_ Bucky’s own cock tenting his pants, hear Bucky’s ragged breaths, see the flush spreading down his neck to his chest, that does it.

Steve arches and spills over his chest and belly. His moan is smothered by Bucky’s hand, which presses down harder as Bucky lets out a ragged gasp and grips Steve tighter, pulling a little rougher to milk the last of his orgasm.

He tugs Bucky down before Bucky can say a word, hand trembling as he shoves it down the front of Bucky’s pants. The keening moan in the back of Bucky’s throat gets cut off by Steve’s mouth, then his deep chuckle as he says, “Now who needs to keep it down?”

Bucky’s hips jerk, pushing his cock into Steve’s fist. “Shut…up,” he pants, cupping the back of Steve’s head. Then he drops his own, lets his forehead rest against Steve’s.

Steve’s throat is a desert, but he still manages a hoarse “Look.” Though he can’t see if Bucky is or not, he knows, somehow, that he is. Steve works Bucky’s cock the way Bucky’d worked his, tight and fast, chasing climax rather than trying to draw it out.

_Later_ , Steve’s mind supplies, making him shiver. Later. There will be a later.

Bucky gets closer quicker than Steve, breathing out hitched whines, hips juddering. The air in the small tent is hot, and Steve knows it smells like sex, but those worries seem so far away right now. He moves his other hand to Bucky’s balls, feeling the warm skin, soft hair, how tight they’re drawn up to Bucky’s body.

Bucky shivers, moans low and begs, “Kiss me.”

Steve does, and Bucky comes, wet and hot over Steve’s hand and wrist and chest, over the splatters of his own come. Steve wonders what Bucky’s face looks like, if he could draw it next time, _when they get home_. The thought makes Steve press another hard kiss to Bucky’s mouth.

“Steve,” murmurs Bucky, thready, emotional. There may as well not be a war going on just outside their tent. Not when all Steve can smell is Bucky, their sex, and all he can think is _later_.

“Buck,” says Steve, because they are, they’re going home, together.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is [here](https://endofadream.tumblr.com) and instagram is [here](https://instagram.com/wintersoldiered), if you’re into that sort of thing! come check me out, maybe leave a review. i love discussing my stories with you all <3


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